Bohemian Rhapsody
by Thessaly
Summary: Roger dreams and Scara learns to play Musetta’s Waltz a sacreligious fic from an unrepentant author.  For Rentheads and WWRY fans...A plotless wonder with lots of language, general angst, lyric snatching, two dark puns, and one ironic observation.


Does it bother anybody else that we have two almost parallel groups of Bohemians on this site and no one has brought them together? Well, this is an attempt to introduce the We Will Rock You bohemians to the Rent bohemians. Readable for fans of either, if you're that crazy...Basically, this got into my head and wouldn't get out again (much like music written by Freddie Mercury or Jon Larson, curse them both. They're laughing at me from the great music studio in the sky). Don't own characters, situation, lyrics or, in some cases, dialogue. Post Rent, post WWRY. And no, I have no idea how the hell this happens. Just trust me as I wrench the fictional time/space continuum for my own self-indulgent purposes.

Roger Davis fell asleep on the coach fairly frequently. He got tired pretty fast, now; Mark said his system was busy. Given the general back-ground low-level shittiness he felt, he was tempted to agree. Besides, Mark probably knew. Mark was the kind of person who listened to the stuff the doctors said when they told you what drugs to take. Christ…more drugs. Point to you, Collins, for catching that irony. Anyway, whatever it was, it kept him indoors, with his guitar for company and the rooftops of New York for scenery. He didn't really mind. He felt too spacey to do anything anyway. Just watch the fat rats with wings wander around and shit on the balcony. He pushed the guitar over onto the floor and drifted off into sleep, face half buried in the couch cushions. Roger dreamed.

Scaramouche sat in the corner of her upstairs studio, guitar across her knees and squinted at Gazz's sheet music. Damn, but his handwriting was bad…It was late afternoon and the sun slanted through the glass windows, making her headachy from glare and frustration. They'd be here at five to play through this arrangement. It was light on guitar, heavy on keyboard and drums. Given it was Meat's song, it was only fair. She stretched, feeling her back pop. This was not going well. Not at all. And she didn't want to have to admit to Gazz she didn't know what to do now. Nope, he was _not_ going to see her like that. Confused. She was never confused. She sighed. _Fuck. Fuckitty fuck fuck fuck._

The stairs creaked and her head jerked up. If that was Gazz she was in some serious deep shit…A figure appeared in the doorstep, and knocked on the doorframe. For some reason Scara felt it should be a girl with a candle-stub, with a fleeting glitter of moonlight caught in her hair and illuminating her own patch of dark, even without the candle. But it wasn't – almost the opposite, in fact: a silhouette outlined by sunlight. "You the Dreamer?" It spoke with a man's voice.

"No," she said. Who the hell didn't know who the Dreamer was? "He's my boyfriend."

"Uh huh. He going to be here soon?"

"Yeah, at five." She paused, staring at the figure and trying to place the accent, with its unexpected flatness. "You wanna come in?"

There was a pause as he lingered in the doorway. Then he said, "Sure. Thanks," and shadow resolved itself into a young man, a little older than Scara, dressed in jeans and leather, with a guitar slung over one shoulder. At first she saw him only as a shape, a collection of features in a slight frame with the feathered hair lit up by late afternoon sunlight and his face in shadow. Then he sat down with a little sigh and stretched long legs in front of him, and she got a better look at him. He wasn't just slight, he was unhealthily thin. The angles in his face shouldn't have been there, and neither should the lines around his thin mouth and light eyes. And the eyes…the eyes had seen everything. Scara wondered where she'd seen that look before; the look of someone sick and weary and overpowered by a life too vibrant for one frame. "Hey," he said, looking at her. "I'm Roger."

"Scaramouche." Roger felt something like a grin pull at his mouth on hearing her name that was not a name. A short girl in a strange dress and combat boots, with distrust behind dark eyes and purple-streaked black hair pulled roughly back. She looked suspicious, generally pissed off, and very young. He wondered what kept drawing him to these girls who were both old and young at the same time. Probably the same thing that kept Mark chasing after Maureen. He sighed. Scaramouche, at least, didn't seem to be the tragic type.

"Hey," he said, noticing the instrument on her lap. "Is that an Axe?"

"Yeah," she said, arms tightening protectively around the Hairy One's guitar. "It's kind of an heirloom."

"Well, duh," said Roger. "Can I see it?"

Scara watched the care with which he put his own guitar on the ground, then passed it over. "Careful, right." She watched as he positioned it on his lap and ran his fingers along the strings. He tried to play a few chords, and grimaced. Scara grinned. "Well, it's better than Gazz did," she said. "You'd better give it back. It's kind of programmed to me."

"Apparently," said the strange guitarist a little sourly. "You know how to play it?"

"Of course I do," Scara said quickly. She wrapped her hand around the fingerboard, feeling the dig of the frets. Then began to play the riff for Killer Queen. It felt good, and she only stopped when it went back to vocals. She glanced up, and found the Roger guy watching her.

"Yeah," he said a little resentfully. "Yeah, you do. That is a fucking nice guitar." Scara shrugged, and picked up her music again. He seemed perfectly happy to lie in the sun, eyes half closed, fingering a fragmented melody on his own guitar.

"What's that?" said Scara, dragged away from chords she didn't understand to a fragile skeleton of tone.

"Something I wrote," said Roger, lazily. His face was turned up to the sunlight, the bones outlined in gold. "A long time ago."

"Are you in a band or something?"

Something spasmed in his face. "Used to be." He shrugged. "Pretty-boy front man. Vocals, lead guitar, you know. That shit. You?"

"Guitar. Stuff, right. Does it have a name?" Scaramouche demanded. Guys. They were so out of it. Gazz was just like this, sometimes.

"Musetta's Waltz," he said.

Scara fidgeted, listening to the waltz. "That's annoying, that's what it is. Doesn't it ever end?"

"Not really," said Roger, and sighed.

"Will you show me how to play it?" Roger opened his eyes and looked at her through circles of red and gold. Why the hell not? She knew what she was doing.

"All right," he said. "You gotta start with a diminished E minor, up to a C, and then…" She was staring at him, a glowering, dark stare that stopped him with its formidable energy.

"What?"

Roger blinked. "What do you mean, what?"

"I mean, what."

"What?"

"Wait, what?" Roger blinked. "Oh shit," said the girl. "Look, can I ask you a question?" Scara looked down at her unplayable music, and then at the other guitarist, with his long fingers coiled around the neck of his instrument. His guitar looked old. _He_ looked old; worn, as though he'd been through even more than she had. He didn't have the stage presence Gazz did, that aura of glitter that hung in your vision. But he had a glamour of hard living and of real rock'n'roll. Whatever that was. She had the feeling she was looking at what she should be, and that she, Scara, reluctant chick and scary witch-lady, was a half-assed kid with a guitar too good for her and just a wannabe looking at the real thing. She didn't like it. On the other hand, she didn't know him, and he didn't know her. He had walked into the studio out of nowhere, with darkness clinging to his face and a guitar across his back. Pop didn't know shit about guitars; nobody did, and since it would appear that the mystical Brian May didn't offer lessons, she might as well take what she could get.

"Hm. What?"

It came out in a rush. "So, um, I don't actually know how to play this." He looked confused. "I mean, it's all instinctual, right." She sighed. "Fuck. It's a long story. Basically, I can play some stuff, but no one's ever really taught me, you know, like chords and stuff."

"Wait a minute." Roger blinked. "No one taught you to play like that? You just do it?" She nodded. "How did you get the music?"

"Gazz – the Dreamer – he wrote it."

"Ok. But. Oh, screw that." It didn't make any sense, but Christ, he was used to stuff that didn't make sense. And he'd had worse trips than a hostile teenager who played riffs like a rock star but didn't know theory. "So you want me to explain this?"

She looked away, fingers running up and down the strings of the guitar. Roger sighed. He would have _killed_ for an Axe like that. Then she looked up and said, awkwardly, "Yeah."

"Ok. Look, this is a G chord. You need to put your hands here, and here." He showed her. This part was easy – he'd gone through it with every groupie, every girl he'd picked up before. _Oh my God! You play the guitar! Will you show me?_

"Yeah, I know that," Scaramouche said, watching him with her bright rodent eyes. She strummed the chord. "What next?" All right. So she was a hell of a lot smarter than the average groupie, and had a smattering of theory. She was actually pretty good at the concepts, even. It was just that no one had bothered to show her how to apply them to a guitar. Going back to basics – explaining how each note built onto another, what kind of mood each chord induced, what you could say with the little blocks of music. He taught her Musetta's Waltz – God knows why. And then some other things. It was almost – fun.

They were wrangling about F-sharps when the Dreamer finally arrived. "Scara?" They both turned to see in the doorway a dark-haired boy, slightly taller than he could handle and a little gawky. "Hey, Gazza," said Scara. She jerked her head at the other guitarist. "This is Roger. And that's the Dreamer."

"Hi," said Roger.

"Heya," said the other boy. "I'm Galileo," he added. "Galileo Figaro." They looked at each other. Galileo, more perceptive than his bad-ass babe, noticed the fatigue in the other man's face, and the afterimages in his eyes. He was used to exiles. "So, do you play guitar too?"

"Um, yeah."

"You want to stick around? We've got a rehearsal, but it looks like you've already seen Scara's part. You can jam with us if you want."

Roger was reminded, oddly, of a flighty version of Mark. He almost smiled. "Thanks."

Galileo shrugged. "No problem." He gestured behind him. "That's Big Macca with the bass," Big Macca, imperturbably chill, waved. "And Meat Loaf on drums. And the other guy's Khashoggi."

Scara happened to look up and see Meat in the right light and realized what Roger reminded her of: the haunted look she'd seen at Wembley and still saw, a little, in most of the Bohemians. A vague aura of privation, of loss, and the remainders of a close community, clinging to the suffering they had in common that made them live each day with a sort of sparkle because it might be their last. The price of ultimate freedom was ultimate exhaustion…

They played through some silly stuff, mostly fast. Killer Queen, because the harmony was still crap, and some non-Freddie stuff Gazz had been working on.

Then, "Meat, you're up," said Galileo, moving one of the mikes back. "Let's give the new one a try."

Meat Loaf, a blond girl in outrageous clothes and dreds, grinned infectiously at Roger. "Feel free to join us for backup if you want."

"Right," said Galileo. "We ready? Meat?" She nodded and he played a few chords introduction on the piano.

A hand above the water An angel reaching for the sky 

_Is it raining in Heaven? Do you want us to cry?_

_And everywhere the broken-hearted_

_On every lonely avenue_

_No one could reach them,_

No one but you 

They got through the second verse and then stopped. Meat sat still behind her set, the beat gone, breathing in soft gasps. "I can't," she whispered. "Oh, God, Galileo, I'm so sorry. I can't." Khashoggi, in his corner, stayed still, his jaw tightening.

Scara, maybe because she was beside him, noticed the other guitarist, standing rock-still. "Hey," she said quietly. "You all right?" She reached out and, tentatively, touched his arm.

He flinched. "What?"

"You gonna be OK?"

He shut his eyes and shivered. "Christ. Only the good die young. Who said that, anyway?"

Scara looked around. She was crap at this kind of thing. But Gazz and Khashoggi and Big Macca had gathered around Meat who was, after all, their own. Just her luck she got stuck with the angsty guitarist who came out of nowhere. His shoulders shook. "Hey, you're gonna be all right," she said, because she couldn't really think of anything else to say.

He jerked his head in the direction of Meat. "What's up with her?"

"Her boyfriend got, um, shot. He was trying to get Gazz and me out of it, and he ran into the fire." She swallowed. "It's tough, you know?" Roger nodded, distracted.

"I know," he echoed. "I should tell you - "

"You?"

"Me."

"Who'd you lose, then?" Scaramouche said, carefully.

He made a sound that was part laugh, part sob, part sigh. "An angel," he said. "And a girl. Two girls; one in spring and one in winter."

Scara put her hands on his shoulders. "Look," she said, trying to see his face, trying to figure out what to say. This one needed gentler handling than Gazz. "Look, we've all done things we aren't proud of. We've all done stupid shit. We've all - " She searched for something comforting, and could find nothing. How was Meat hanging on? She had no idea. For the second time that day, Scaramouche felt young. She didn't like it any better than she had the first time.

"Hey," said Galileo, coming up beside them. "Roger, you all right?" Roger didn't say anything. Scara slid her hands off his shoulders, and Gazz said, "You want to come over here? Just sit down, all right." It was a comforting voice; he knew what to do. He always did, in a funny way.

A hand brushed her arm. "Hey, guitar chick."

"I'm not a poultry; don't call me chick," said Scara automatically.

Roger shrugged. "Whatever. Anyway, thanks."

"Um, you're welcome, I guess." She squashed the urge to giggle. Oh God, why do I always get the awkward guys? There was a pause, then she reached forward and hugged him. Dealing with Gazz's neuroses had taught her the importance of touch. "Thanks for telling me what to do, you know."

He squeezed her shoulders. "You didn't need all that much telling." His eyes, small and blue, were rimmed in pink. He looked very tired. "You're gonna be good, kid. Thanks for making me feel better."

Kid? Guys were weird… Scara watched them go, fingers sliding to the chords of Musetta's Waltz without really thinking about it. Gazz, as annoying as he was, had a gift for empathy; he'd been through a lot, half of it self-inflicted, and he remembered what it was like. He was the Dreamer – predictably silly, impractical, and oddly compelling. And he attracted the exiles, the unhappy, the desperate, from Khashoggi to this man. Scaramouche looked at the light on Roger's hair and decided there was a hell of a lot she didn't think about that maybe she should, some time. She wondered if he really was going to be all right. She had no idea.

And somewhere else, Roger Davis woke up with half a cushion in his mouth, and turned over the stare at the loft ceiling. When Mark came up the stair half an hour later, he found his friend playing Bohemian Rhapsody instead of the interminable Musetta's Waltz, or, occasionally, Your Eyes. "That's a change," he said, dumping his junk on the table.

"I had it in my head," said Roger, vaguely.

"Why? You hate British music."

"Dunno…" Roger smiled, a fleeting, dreamy smile Mark hadn't seen in weeks. "I had some fucked-up dreams. That might have had something to do with it.


End file.
